The Weekly Volcano, Dec. 26, 2013
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| "Cloud Form Number 1, September 1998" by Mary Randlett. |
If we can
trust the evidence of the past three months, Salon Refu in Olympia is now one
of the best art galleries between Seattle and Portland. And Mary Randlett is
the most celebrated photographer in the Pacific Northwest.
Recognized as
an outstanding landscape photographer and celebrated for her marvelous
sensitivity to the unique Northwest light, Randlett is one of the few surviving
members of the Northwest School; she has shot portraits of all the great
artists from Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan and Guy Anderson to Mike Spafford,
and has been represented in some of the best museums.
Now a large
selection on her landscape photographs is on display at Salon Refu — black and
white photos that show an unerring eye for light and the subtleties of gray
tone and the ability to capture the perfect moment: when the sun lines up with
a silhouetted tree or rock or when a shadow highlights a fish in shallow water.
Artist and
friend Jeffree Stewart wrote of her photographs, “They’re quiet, like mist,
revealing light that moves over waters dark as ink.”
In looking at
her pictures at Salon Refu I noticed that she has a particular penchant for
finding the single, isolated image like a tree on top of a cliff with nothing
else around. If we were to step back for a wider view we may see many other
trees, but in her photo that one tree stands alone in quiet beauty.
You see it in
the single dark log lying across ripples of water in “Shoalwater Bay” or in an
untitled photo from July1999 with the aforementioned single naked tree standing
on top of a ridge on Mount Rainier where a snow plow has recently pass through,
or in a fish on its side underwater framed by shadows of trees on the bank in a
photographed titled “Spawned Out Humpy.” The fish looks dead and ghost-like.
In “Teal
Slough Esturary” small islands of mud in shallow water look like alligators.
“Lunar Halo”
presents a dramatic picture of a halo around the moon behind a tree on the
horizon — another example of her ability to find the single image isolated in a
larger landscape.
These are but
a handful of the many outstanding photographs in this show
[Salon Refu, Thursday-Sunday, noon to 6
p.m. through Jan. 5, 114 N. Capitol Way, Olympia, 360-280-3540.]
The proprietress of Salon Refu thanks you for your praise. We do our best on no budget by showing very, very good artists and no bad ones. Today I'll be painting the floor again, since the traffic for Mary R's show has worn off the original three coats.
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